This disclosure relates to processing of noisy signals, and more particularly, to conversion of noisy signals to a probabilistic representation.
One approach to conversion of an analog value to a digital value based on a partition of the input range makes use of an analog-to-digital (A/D) converter (ADC). An input range with 2n input regions can output an n-bit digital value representing which region the input is found within. Among the fastest A/D converters are “flash” converters. A flash (or direct) converter can make use of 2n−1 comparators to perform an n-bit conversion in one stage, which each comparator being associated with a region quantized to the same digital value. The size and cost of all those comparators makes flash converters generally impractical for large numbers of output bits (e.g., much greater than eight bits or 255 comparators). Other forms of A/D converters use multiple iterations to reduce the circuitry at the expense of increased conversion time. For example, a successive approximation ADC can use log2(n) processing stages with a single comparator.